ANGIE, 64, inspired some of her husband David’s greatest music – but her dream was bringing a comic heroine to life, as she tells Danny Scott

“This is me dressed as Black Widow, the Marvel comics character, in 1975. I’ve always been a Marvel fan. As a kid I would pick up a two-foot stack of comics and read them in the back of my dad’s car on long journeys across the States. That’s how I used to make friends – I’d meet up with other kids and we’d swap comics.

I loved the outrageous costumes but I also loved the stories. What adults don’t always understand is that to a kid, a comic book is like a movie. My Marvel comics took my imagination to other places – other galaxies.

I was always interested in acting and writing, and I honestly thought I’d make my name as a scriptwriter one day. But somehow I ended up in London in the early 70s, and that’s where I had my David Bowie adventure.

David and I both thought that rock music was boring, so we started talking about how we could make it more interesting. We said, ‘Look, you don’t have to wear denims and a beer-stained T-shirt and just bang out your hit singles. If you’ve got good music, let’s make it look good, too. Let’s give it colour and light – let’s make it theatrical.’

So that’s what we did, and people called it glam rock.

Then I found myself back in the US promoting David’s live show. I was having a meeting about doing a cartoon version of Ziggy Stardust and I got invited to lunch with Marvel comics legend Stan Lee – the guy who helped create all those great characters like Spider-Man and Iron Man.

Angie Bowie's dream was bringing a comic heroine to life [S MAG]

“We got talking about one of the female Marvel characters, Black Widow. Everybody round the table started getting really excited about it, and suddenly there I was paying Stan Lee one dollar for the movie rights.Back in London I set to work with Natasha Korniloff, who designed some of the costumes for Ziggy Stardust, and the photographer Terry O’Neill. With Terry’s help,

I pushed and pushed the project, but what I didn’t realise in all my youthful enthusiasm was that the special-effects business wasn’t quite advanced enough to make the film that I wanted to make. Today it would be easy, but back then if you wanted to fly through the air, you literally had to fly through the air. Making the film would have been impossible without some serious money behind it, and unfortunately no one was prepared to take a chance.

There were rumours about all kinds of people, like David and Telly Savalas, being involved in the project. It never happened, so all I have to show for it are some great pictures like this one, taken by Terry. But I’m still a Marvel fan and I’ve seen all the films.

Angie, 64, inspired some of her husband David’s greatest music [S MAG]

I hate being idle – there are still so many things I want to do

Angie Bowie

I still act, too, and I do a lot of writing. I recently released Cat-Astrophe, a book about my cats that will hopefully raise some money for animal and homeless charities, and I’ve got another book out called Pop.Sex, which is like a history of sexuality. There’s also a CD of my poetry coming out later in the year.

I hate being idle – there are still so many things I want to do. People always ask me about the 70s and say, ‘Wow, was it really that crazy?’ C’mon – everybody gets a little wild when they’re in their twenties. Everybody likes to experiment a little bit. We were

just young kids, working at being entertainers. We had plenty of ideas and plenty of energy, and we wanted to leave our mark on the world. When you think about it, what was so crazy about that?”

Angie’s books are available from Amazon. Autographed copies are also available from angiebowie.net.